Sunday, November 1, 2009

It was quite an October, way beyond my expectations. When I started this blog back in August my goal was to share some of the great stories about folk art that I had heard over the course of my 27 years studying the collection at the Feinmore Art Museum. In my wildest dreams I thought maybe 300 visits a month would be pretty good. If 300 people wanted to read what I wrote, that was wonderful.

With some help from a friend, Gary Myers, whose blog Redtree Times I highly recommend, I learned how to promote this blog. Sites like Alpha Inventions were very helpful. And the results have been astounding. In the month of October I had 1,150 visitors from 59 countries, a total of 3,341 visits and (this is what really floored me) more than 21,000 page views! The average visit lasted 24 minutes.

Someone out there must like reading this stuff. And as long as that is true, I'll keep writing it.

I do have one goal that I would like to share with you. As the Vice President and Chief Curator of the Fenimore Art Museum, I have a role in determining the exhibitions each year. In 2010 I would like to mount our first-ever blog-curated exhibition at the museum.

What is a blog-curated exhibition? That means YOU decide what goes in. Readers of this blog will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite posts, and the winners will be included (with the physical artworks, of course) in one of our main galleries in the spring.

Be thinking about it. Details on how to vote will announced soon. In the meantime, thank you all for sharing this experience with me. Be assured that there is more great stuff to come. Thank you also for your great comments; they are always welcome. For those of you who prefer a more private conversation, please send me an email at p.dambrosio@nysha.org.

Oh, and don't forget to keep your eyes open for those lost or forgotten artists or works in your own backyards. Good things come to those who look.

5 comments:

Paul-- Congratulations for the great results you're getting. Those are great numbers for a newer blog and really good for an established one. The blog curated exhibit sounds like a really neat idea and I look forward to hearing more details.

Thanks, Gary. You really helped make it happen. As soon as I feel like I have enough posts for people to vote on I'll put together some guidelines on the process of the exhibition. I've got some good posts in thepipeline that I don't want to leave out. Thanks again!

Paul D'Ambrosio

Paul D'Ambrosio is President and CEO of the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and oversees one of the best folk art collections in the United States. He has organized exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Japan. He is also Adjunct Professor of American Folk Art in the Cooperstown Graduate Program for Museum Studies and the author of numerous books and articles about American folk art.